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Tech compensation in 2021

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Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#351

Post by coliveira »

Jensson wrote: post #316
adventured wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If things are working so well in Europe, why hasn't most of Europe seen any economic growth in two or three decades? That sure sounds like it's severely broken to me. The GDP of Germany and France are both below where they were in 1995 inflation adjusted (and that was true even before Covid hit). Britain's economy is where it was in 1998. Italy is far below where it was 30 years ago ($2.1t today; $1.32t in 1992, whic…

> The GDP of Germany and France are both below where they were in 1995 inflation adjusted In US dollars. You can't use USD inflation numbers for other countries, Euro inflated much less than US dollars in these years. The effect you see where Europe has stagnated given USD levels of inflation is just the effect of USD currently being a bubble. If you use their internal inflation numbers then the economies of Europe a…

USD is supposed to be a bubble, because that's how it was designed (at least after Breton Woods). I realized this when trying to figure out when the GDP of China would be higher than the US, and seeing that this depends less on real Chinese production and more on the crazy valuation of USD.

A lot of US economy is not real. A lot of the GDP is based on financial services, real estate, and stocks (including tech), which are pure bubble money. A lot of the economy is also based on health care, which basically doesn't exist is a decent country with public services. The other part is "defense", which means they threat the rest of the world into growing their economy.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#352

Post by hasdf »

jurassic wrote: post #76
metalliqaz wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah no kidding. I was shocked at the numbers in this article. A 15-year engineer in aerospace gets you ~120k.

I'm not surprised. I'm guessing the aerospace industry is relatively stable in size (we don't suddenly need a lot more planes, spacecraft, or weapon systems than in the past), so employers in that industry don't need to offer big compensation packages to lure away scarce employees from competitors in order to enable that growth.

from talking to friends I think its more that there are really only 2-3 viable employers in the US, so there is little option to jump ship for higher salary. This keeps salaries artificially low. For example a friend of mine worked at raytheon, jumped to lockheed for a raise, back to raytheon for another raise, and then back to lockheed. You can only do that so many times before companies stop hiring you. Whereas in my field (IT consulting) there are an almost infinite amount of small companies to work for

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#353

Post by lotsofpulp »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #262
eegg7 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best thing I did for my career was leave Boston for an entry level FANG job on the West Coast 10 years ago. I currently make more than 10x what I was making in Boston. But it has been a grind no doubt. And probably some luck.

I had the chance to do that in 2009 and my wife (then fiancé) and I decided to stay close to family. I often wonder if that was a mistake...

Depends what your goals were or are. It is also unproductive to evaluate previous decisions with information that was not available at that time.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#354

Post by throwaway2016a »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #310
throwaway2016a wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just at first look it seems the 50th percentile is roughly the same (slightly higher) on the Robert Half numbers. But either way, not everyone can work for FAANG, so I think looking at the overall picture is fair. I'm pretty confident even with 20 years of experience and I can't even get a FAANG interview (let alone pass it), I'm just not their type.

> even with 20 years of experience and I can't even get a FAANG interview (let alone pass it) If you want one, I've never had the impression that getting an interview was the hard part. I participated in Google Code Jam maybe 9 years ago, passed either 0 or 1 rounds (there's a "qualification round" which I definitely passed, and later a "round 1" which I have a feeling I probably didn't pass), and every so often they…

I have been told I have an excellent resume by Google recruiters and gotten a recommendation from a manager I worked with in the past there and still not gotten an interview.

With that said, I think it is because at the time the Boston office was mostly specialists and I'm a generalist. I'm also not from a top 10 school in a city filled with top-10 schools which didn't help, I'm sure.

But that was years ago. Maybe I'd have better luck these days.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#355

Post by rokob »

throwaway19170 wrote: post #336

So there are all these people in these threads who are like "I only make $175K/200K/150K, I feel like I'm grossly underpaid when I read these things." I got you all beat. I have 15+ experience. I am a really good coder . I can be very not humble because this is a throwaway, but everyone who has ever worked with me or gone to school with me or worked on open source with me would agree, I am very good at designing and…

If you know Ruby really well you might want to look at Stripe. You might be able to just apply and get an interview and see where it goes.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#356

Post by xyzzyz »

f3d46600-b66e wrote: post #311
johnqpub wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Seattle so the situation is a bit better than the valley. But here's a breakdown: L6 at Amazon, single, no kids: ~$400K TC $33,333 per month gross About $100K in federal tax, no state income tax in WA. $8333 per month Healthcare: $34 a month for an HSA plan. $3,650 over the course of the year goes into the HSA, including the employer portion. That ends up being about $205 out of my pocket. This is a bit compli…

If you want to purchase a home, you probably need to replace 2k with 4k-5k/month for a mortgage on a home (30 year loan) + ~1k/month in property taxes. Add two kids, each 2k/mo/child in daycare. That's 7k/month extra. Still leaves you a nice chunk though.

> with 4k-5k/month for a mortgage on a home (30 year loan) + ~1k/month in property taxes.

That’s if you’re buying $1.3M house. There are plenty of good houses to be had in Seattle for $900k.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#357

Post by lotsofpulp »

throwaway19170 wrote: post #336

So there are all these people in these threads who are like "I only make $175K/200K/150K, I feel like I'm grossly underpaid when I read these things." I got you all beat. I have 15+ experience. I am a really good coder . I can be very not humble because this is a throwaway, but everyone who has ever worked with me or gone to school with me or worked on open source with me would agree, I am very good at designing and…

> I don't know how to get into it. Help me out?

Go to levels.fyi and apply to those companies’ job listings.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#358

Post by xyzzyz »

zz865 wrote: post #291
johnqpub wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Seattle so the situation is a bit better than the valley. But here's a breakdown: L6 at Amazon, single, no kids: ~$400K TC $33,333 per month gross About $100K in federal tax, no state income tax in WA. $8333 per month Healthcare: $34 a month for an HSA plan. $3,650 over the course of the year goes into the HSA, including the employer portion. That ends up being about $205 out of my pocket. This is a bit compli…

> single, no kids Yeah that is playing on easy. Now try with a big suburban home, private schools, and wife who needs a lot of healthcare.

Private school will sure cost you a lot, but healthcare will not, annual out of pocket maximums on most company plans are <$5k.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#359

Post by franciscop »

eminence32 wrote: post #199
throwaway2016a wrote: post #90

20 years experience, two books under my belt, and lead architect (with a CTO title) on several good sized projects and most I have ever gotten in $175k... every time I see an article like this, I think I am doing something "very wrong" I live about 40 miles outside of Boston. Edit: Looking at levels.fyi for Boston that actually puts me above the median[1]. Why the heck is Boston so low compared to other markets? Edit…

It seems like a lot of HN readers are continually playing the "maximize salary" game and use like articles like this one to figure out how well they're doing. If you want to play that game, then good luck, have fun. I understand the desire. But it's not for everyone. Are you able to live comfortably on $175k per year? Do you enjoy what you do and the people that you work with? If so, I don't think there should be any…

Everything else being the same, it's better to make 300k than 175k/year. And not everything is the same, normally in those better paid jobs you have better Engineers, a lot of challenging problems, many nice perks, etc. What you don't normally have is flexibility to negotiate special conditions e.g. 4day work week. Also you don't get highly ethical companies, just average ones at that (and it might actually be better to donate the diff between 300k and 175k vs working in a slightly more ethical place for 175k).

So as far as general advice goes, it makes sense to recommend trying to get those FAANG jobs if you can.

Re: Tech compensation in 2021

#360

Post by psim1 »

throwaway19170 wrote: post #336

So there are all these people in these threads who are like "I only make $175K/200K/150K, I feel like I'm grossly underpaid when I read these things." I got you all beat. I have 15+ experience. I am a really good coder . I can be very not humble because this is a throwaway, but everyone who has ever worked with me or gone to school with me or worked on open source with me would agree, I am very good at designing and…

I left tech at the university as soon as it started feeling like things were "getting old." And at that point I realized I should have left maybe 4 years earlier to get on with my career.

I think I will try to get back in when I am ready to retire, maybe a nice IT management position for a few years.

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